Wisconsin's physical style of play coupled with Michigan struggling with five losses in their last six games all add up to a Badgers win and cover on Saturday at home in Madison.
If the foundation is being properly built, the second half of season No. 2 is when we begin to see tangible improvements on the field after a major coaching change has taken place with a program.
But sometimes that can be a big IF. That is not what we see in Ann Arbor, and with the marketplace badly over-rating Michigan right now we will not hesitate to go to the well again.
This is the fourth consecutive week that Rich Rodriguez and the Wolverines have drawn backing in the early trading, and we can understand part of where the first money would have come from. After hanging tough at Iowa in early October, and then trouncing Delaware State 63-6 in a walk-over the following week, savvy observers could believe that turn was taking place, and want to buy in early.
They helped to set us up with an easy Penn State ticket three weeks ago, and created that opportunity with Purdue at a full +7 last Saturday. And while there is Michigan money showing again, the evidence for us is clear that the Wolverine engine has not been built yet to run with much horsepower.
Instead of improving down the stretch we see the Maize and Blue crumbling, and in the current 0-3 SU and ATS run they have lost to the spread by a combined 72 points, or an average of 24 per game. When a team is falling that far from expectations it can never be reduced to a single factor, and it has to be viewed as a combination of talent, coaching, and effort, with the latter two factors particularly ugly right now.
At this point in the season coaching and effort show up in the second half of games. The better coaches obviously make better adjustments, and when a team has the hunger to win they execute those halftime designs with vigor. But in the second half of the past three games Michigan has been out-scored by a stunning 75-12.
And it is not as though the Wolverines have been backed into a corner and forced to try desperate things – they were only trailing Penn State 19-10 at intermission, and had the lead vs. mediocre Illinois and Purdue. When the latter two smack you for 76 points and 994 yards of total offense, you are not only struggling physically, but also at a fragile state mentally.
You do not want to show up fragile at Camp Randall in November. The same Purdue team that won at Ann Arbor last week was buried here 37-0 two weeks ago, and the Badgers are going to bring a particularly sharp focus this week.
Brett Bielema has talked about LY’s 27-25 loss at Michigan being the most frustrating of his coaching career, coming on an afternoon in which his team built a 19-0 halftime lead and was clearly superior physically, but there were a couple of monster fourth quarter turnovers (an INT that was returned for a TD, and a fumble lost inside the Michigan 10-yard line) that turned the scoreboard around.
That sets this up awfully well for our purposes – one of our favorite concepts in sports is the favorite playing with revenge that blew a big lead in the previous defeat. The films serve as a reminder that you can never take a play off no matter how big of a lead you have, so they come in with the natural aggression to even the score from that giveaway, and also the mindset to keep adding to the margin to prevent a re-occurrence from the previous collapse.
With Wisconsin being the physical style of play that is so ideal in November (the Badgers out-rushed Purdue and Indiana by a 250-123 count the past two games), we have a favorite that can pound the struggling underdog into submission.
Free Pick: Wisconsin -8½ (-110)